


Never Go Up Against the Leverage Team When A Job Is On the Line

by Telaryn



Category: Avengers (Comics), Leverage, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Banter, Companionable Snark, Crossover, Double & Triple Cross, Drugs, Gen, Heist, International Incident, Kidnapping, Party, Snark, Theft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-03-01 04:27:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13286976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telaryn/pseuds/Telaryn
Summary: The team ends up targeting the same intelligence as SHIELD's infamous Strike Team Delta.  When Clint and Natasha try to use Nate to force a short-cut in their mission, it (predictably) doesn't go the way they plan.





	Never Go Up Against the Leverage Team When A Job Is On the Line

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kiss_me_cassie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiss_me_cassie/gifts).



> Prompt Used: 4. Leverage lends itself SO well to crossovers, so how about with Psych or Marvel or DC Comics or Lethal Weapon or something? 
> 
> I'm so glad you participated this year - I know you were nervous about being able to complete something. This is our small way of saying "thank you".

It was easily the hardest part of an infiltration like this, listening to Hardison’s litany of complaints. Eliot emptied his tray and headed back to the bar for a refill, hoping no one saw him roll his eyes.

_”I know this mix of chemicals is doing nasty things to my insides. I can feel the brain cells dying off.”_

Eliot grimaced, annoyed at the general unfairness of it all. _He leaves perfectly good openings just lying around and, I’m supposed to pretend that I don’t hear anything._ He was already scanning the ballroom for Nate and Sophie when a long, messy sneeze cut across the comms. “Hardison, I swear if you don’t calm down I’m going to give you something to really worry about.”

“Excuse me – may I have one of those?” Eliot had just accepted a replacement tray loaded down with champagne flutes, when he heard Sophie at his elbow. Pivoting slightly, he offered the tray with a slight flourish. Smiling her loveliest smile, Sophie picked up the glass closest to her and took a sip. “Not a lot of friendlies around tonight.”

Eliot let his agreement show on his face, hyper aware of the crowd of people around them, and how any one of them might be here for the same reason they were. “Nate send you over to take my emotional temperature?” he asked as they moved away from the bar and further into the anonymity of the room.

 _”You blame me?”_ Nate’s voice was suddenly in his ear. _”You’re like the cat in the proverbial room of rockers tonight.”_

“Hardison…” Eliot began, but he broke off when he saw Sophie’s slight frown.

“Hardison is doing nothing more than he usually does in situations like this,” she pointed out. Eliot thought he might have heard a self-congratulatory noise over the network, but the hacker was getting better at holding his tongue.

 _Especially when he’s being defended,_ the hitter was forced to acknowledge. “All right,” he said out loud. “If it’s not Hardison getting under my skin, what is it?”

 _”That’s what you need to tell me,”_ Nate interjected. _”If you’re picking something up off the room…”_

“It’s not anything he’s consciously aware of,” Sophie said, before Eliot could find the words to adequately defend himself. “Eliot, roughly how many people in this room do you think you’ve crossed paths with before?”

Guests were already starting to pick his tray clean. Eliot used the distraction to buy himself some time and give Sophie’s question due consideration. “A few,” he admitted, once the space around them had cleared again. “More than a few.”  
***************************************  
 _”Son of a…”_

Natasha Romanoff’s hand briefly tightened on her partner’s arm. “Trouble, boss?” she heard Clint murmur. Their handler had clearly been startled by _something_ , but based on the fact he’d been able to rein himself in before ‘bitch’ had escaped him they weren’t at Defcon1.

 _Not yet,_ she added mentally. _Probably not even Defcon2._ Defcon3 was assumed based on where they were and what they were targeting…

 _”Interpol feed’s starting to light up like a supernova,”_ Coulson told them, his voice pulling Natasha back to the here and now. _”Time to take to the dance floor, children – I need to see who’s causing our friends in Lyon such heartburn.”_

She felt, rather than heard Clint’s long-suffering groan, but since he dutifully swept her out onto the floor and into an easy waltz, she let it go. He was a perfectly good dancer, and she’d told him as much enough times for any man’s ego to be sated. It was just…

“I know,” he said, leaning in to whisper in her ear. “It’s just that you’re better.” He kissed her cheek.

Natasha grinned at him, pleased that he’d followed her train of thought so easily, and that his pout had been more reflex than anything else. “As with most things.”

Coulson made no attempt to conceal his snort of amusement.

The brooch camera on her right shoulder would do most of the work, but Natasha did her best to register every face she could passing across her field of vision – knowing that opposite her, Clint was doing the same.

_”Natasha – back six paces at your three o’clock.”_

It took a moment for Clint to maneuver them into position, but when he did Natasha saw immediately who had drawn Coulson’s attention – even if she didn’t immediately understand why. “Who is he?”

 _”Nathan Ford.”_ Coulson reported. _”And he doesn’t work alone, which means this just got a whole lot more complicated.”_  
********************************************  
“Gotta give the Russians credit,” Hardison grumbled, running the cameras again. “Old school is definitely the way to go these days. Parker, on my mark.” The Kremlin’s shift back to typewriters and hard copy files had been something of a joke on the dark web when the chatter first started, but now that he was having to go up against it for real Hardison was finding the whole matter decidedly un-funny.

The two heat signatures he was tracking finally passed Parker’s current hiding place. “Go. Third corridor on the left, and you should be clear to target.”

 _”I like old school,”_ Parker said. Her dot moved out into the corridor and continued at a brisk pace in the direction he’d sent her.

“You would,” Hardison snarked. _Eliot probably feels the same way._

_”You know how long it’s been since I’ve gotten my hands on a Stanislov? I don’t think they’re even taught anymore.”_

“Okay, now you’ve got me thinking about thief-school,” Hardison said, smiling in spite of himself. Parker’s mood really was infectious. “Course loads, graduation requirements…hold up Parker – you’ve got unfriendlies crossing just ahead of you.”

Parker’s dot paused on his screen, withdrawing slightly into the shelter of a nearby doorway. Neither hacker nor thief said anything until the cluster of three dots were safely past. “Okay,” Hardison said, letting out a breath. “Go left at the next intersection and the target should be right in front of you.”

_“Apprenticeship.”_

Hardison froze, eyes ticking right to check the screen displaying the operational status of each of the coms. _Nate’s unit…_

But that definitely wasn’t Nate who had spoken. “Excuse me?” he asked.

The woman who somehow had possession of Nate’s comm said, _”Thieves learn through apprenticeship.”_  
************************************  
Clint finished securing their prisoner and checked his pulse. Barring something completely unexpected, the dose of ‘Widow’s Kiss’ Natasha had used to take him out would keep Ford unconscious for somewhere between one and two hours. They’d retreated to an unused office near the main ballroom for greater security and to give Coulson time to assemble everything he could pull from Interpol servers on this very unusual band of thieves.

Natasha had taken possession of Ford’s comm unit, and Clint had been happy to let her have it. “It’s hard enough with you and Coulson in my head.” She’d immediately fitted it to her own ear and begun listening in on the resulting conversations. After a moment she held up four fingers, then pointed to their prisoner.

“Okay, so five on the crew,” he dutifully reported to Coulson. “All on site from the sounds of it?” He raised an eyebrow at his partner, signaling that the question was for her, and was rewarded with an answering nod.

 _”That tracks,”_ Coulson said, his tone slightly distracted by whatever intel he was trying to digest. After a moment of silence he added, _“They’ve got to be after the trade routes. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”_ Secured in a safe at the heart of the embassy was the most up to date information available on one of the deadliest trade routes for weapons and drugs in the Middle East. SHIELD had dispatched Strike Team Delta to secure the information and put the dealers out of business.

Somebody else – somebody as yet unrevealed – had hired Ford’s team to take custody of the same target, but was it for the same reason? _Anybody’s guess._

“No, I’ll tell you how we’re going to play this,” Clint heard Natasha say. “You’re going to go through with the heist. Bring the files to the central courtyard in thirty minutes and you can have your leader back in trade. No muss, no fuss.”

It was a bold move, but Clint didn’t sense anything fundamentally wrong with the plan. _”Tell the truth,”_ he heard Coulson say, _”you two keep me around because the Director takes my calls.”_

Natasha’s grin echoed Coulson’s own. “You also have a higher credit limit,” she said, taking Ford’s communicator out of her ear, “and you speak Russian better than this peasant ever will.” Crouching down by the inert body of their prisoner, she tucked the tiny device into his pocket. “It’s dead,” she explained. “They cut me off as soon as I gave them our terms.”

Clint mentally reviewed what he’d learned of the embassy layout. “That balcony off the ambassador’s private library will give me my best vantage. Coulson, how likely are these guys to play it straight with us?”

 _”Hard to say in the ten minutes or so I’ve had to research them,”_ their handler snarked. _”They’re known to be pretty devoted to their leader though, so I’d say we’re holding most of the aces.”_

“But not all,” Clint acknowledged.

_”You want miracles Barton, you’re in the wrong business.”_

“Stick to the arrows,” Natasha told him. “I think we need to stay non-lethal on this one, and you make such an elegant point with a well-placed shaft.”

Clint grinned. “Agent Romanoff, I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me all year.”

In his ear, Coulson groaned. _”I should have skipped dinner. I’m definitely going to be ill.”_  
*****************************************  
Under the circumstances, Eliot was willing to feel guilty for thinking earlier that Hardison was overreacting. The smell from the different chemicals really was distracting.

Which was something they could not afford. Not with Nate a prisoner and so many questions now hanging over the job…

Sophie gripped his arm, startling Eliot into eye contact. “Stop,” she told him, her blue eyes stern. “Now is not the time.”

He wanted to argue with her. Wanted to unburden himself and his guilt – after all, Nate wouldn’t have been alone and exposed if he hadn’t been worried about the headspace Eliot was in – and most of all he was craving absolution from Sophie and Nate for being so far off his game as to allow this to happen.

Instead he blew out a quiet breath and tried to school his features into something more engaged with what was going on in front of them. “I’m here,” he told her. “We know anything yet?”

It hadn’t taken Hardison long to find the security footage of Nate being ‘helped’ from the ballroom. Sophie had ordered Parker to hold position until they had an ID and some clue as to who they were up against. “I’m having to dig pretty deep here,” Hardison muttered, his focus entirely on his monitor. “I don’t…”

Reaching out, Eliot gripped the hacker’s arm. “You do, man.” Hardison looked up, his expression stricken. Eliot projected as much calm as he could manage. “You got this.”

After a moment Hardison nodded. “I’ve got a couple more things in the old bag of tricks.” He returned his attention to the computer.

Eliot looked at Sophie. “Parker, go. We’re going to need the trade routes regardless. Meet us at the north entrance to the courtyard.”

Across from him, Sophie grinned. “Come by way of the ballroom, Parker. I’m going to want you to pick up a few things.”

Following her line of thought, Eliot nodded his approval. “Get pictures of everything you take out of that safe.” To the others he said, “I wish there was some way we could reasonably leave them with nothing, but if they’re targeting the same thing we are they know it’s hard copy all the way.”

“Ah, about that,” Hardison said carefully. Off Eliot’s startled look he amended, “the who, not the what. I like to poke Uncle Sam in the eye as much as the next hacker, but we might want to just get Nate back and count our blessings on this one.”  
****************************************************  
The scent of roses was heavy in his nostrils as Nate regained consciousness, along with lingering traces of whatever had been used to take him off the board. Speaking of… _I’ve had easier hangovers,_ he thought, registering through the pounding in his head the fact that his hands were cuffed in front of him. Somebody had thoughtfully draped his jacket across his lap, which meant that if he wanted to make a fuss it was probably still on the table as a viable option.

“Natasha Romanoff, Mr. Ford,” a voice said as he decided to risk opening his eyes. “Stay easy and this will all be over soon.”

Nate winced as pain flared up the back of his neck and spread out across the top of his skull. “You could have hit me,” he grumbled, shaking off the jacket and raising his hands to his head. “It would have been kinder.”

She didn’t react to him exposing the fact that he was her prisoner, and Nate automatically took yelling for help off back off the table. “Less efficient,” she said, smiling slightly, and he tasted a Russian accent in her words. “Push fluids for the next twenty-four hours, along with the strongest aspirin you can get your hands on and you will be fine.”

Inwardly relieved at her assumption he would be alive to push fluids for the next twenty-four hours Nate continued to try and find his footing. “So…me for the trade routes, is it? Or something more involved?” It was one of the unspoken threats his team lived with every day – governments around the globe that would do or pay just about anything for a chance at any one of his people.

And Natasha Romanoff, well, she didn’t so much scream ‘government’ as slyly whisper it in your ear in a voice that promised all kinds of decadent delights. _If it’s not the trade routes, she’s targeting Eliot,_ he bet himself. It wasn’t so much that she fit the profile for the sort of honey trap his hitter would fall for, but she definitely fit the profile of the sort of honey trap people tended to assume his hitter would fall for.

“Trade routes,” Natasha admitted. “Your people were already in position, so my partners and I figured there was nothing wrong in motivating them to take care of the heavy lifting for us.”

 _Partners._ They were being covered then – Nate couldn’t see anything from his admittedly limited field of view, but he hoped Eliot had allowed for that. If Natasha had been as free with her intel in negotiating with the team as she was casually talking with him, he didn’t have anything to worry about.

 _Unless she’s lying to you,_ he thought, and god damn, sometimes Nate hated the way his brain worked.  
***************************************  
 _”Natasha, please do not engage with the prisoner,”_ Clint heard Coulson sigh. He grinned, scanning the courtyard below and still seeing only his partner and their captive.

“C’mon boss,” he chided, even though privately he agreed with Coulson – Nat was being a little free with the intel tonight. “She hasn’t had a chance to hit anyone in a week. Not even me. Let her have a little fun.” It was a double-edged sword whenever they caught a break like this. Part of the reason Clint and Natasha were as good at their jobs as they were was that on levels they didn’t talk about in polite company, they really loved their work.

 _”Look sharp,”_ Natasha murmured. _”If the double cross is going to come…”_

She wasn’t wrong. Settling into position, one leg thrown negligently over the railing of the balcony, Clint reached back for an arrow…and froze. “Uh, guys?” He felt around just long enough to realize that his formerly full (and checked) quiver was completely empty, then swung his leg back over and began searching the immediate area.

 _”I’ve got incoming,”_ Natasha reported. _”What’s your status, Hawkeye?”_

Focusing his attention on the problem at hand, Clint went for his sidearm – and swore as he found his holster was empty as well. “Nat, I’m unarmed. Coming to you.”

She couldn’t answer him; Clint could see Ford’s people entering the courtyard. “Dammit,” he swore, mind racing as he tried to decide on his next move.

 _”Let’s at least pretend we’re professional here, people,”_ Coulson groaned. Then, just as Clint was climbing up onto the railing, added, _”And that means not doing something guaranteed to land us in the hospital wing again.”_

Fortunately for all of them, Clint had spotted an avenue of escape slightly safer than the thirty plus foot leap to the brick pavers below. Making his way to the trellis that ran next to his balcony nest, he began to climb.  
****************************************  
“Somebody doesn’t look happy,” Sophie commented as they stepped into the courtyard. Eliot agreed – privately hoping that for all their sakes that they hadn’t overplayed their hand.

 _SHIELD_ Something inside Eliot had gone cold seeing Hardison’s proof of who they were up against. He knew about Strike Team Delta, going back to his darker days, and if things didn’t go as planned he wasn’t entirely sure he could take the Black Widow on her own – let alone with her partner Hawkeye.

“Play it as it lies,” he muttered, tracking for and spotting Nate. Their leader was conscious, but had obviously paid a heavy price for the privilege. “You have what you came for,” he announced, stepping forward. “Let Nate go.”

His announcement threw her even further off balance, as they intended. “Is this some kind of trick?”

Eliot indicated her partner, who was dropping to the ground from a trellis crawling up one wall of the courtyard. “Tell him to check his quiver.”

On cue, Parker came forward, brushing by the woman as she set a handful of arrows and a Glock 9mm pistol on the bench next to Nate. It was all Eliot could do to keep his own expression sober as mastermind and thief grinned at each other, and he wondered if Nate had caught what else they had set in motion.

Hawkeye had closed approximately half the distance separating them when Eliot’s comment reached him. Clearly startled, he shrugged off his quiver and stuck his arm in. “We had to make room,” he explained, as the stunned SHIELD agent withdrew his arm and found himself holding the envelope with the trade routes. Dropping the leather rig, he opened the prize and checked the contents.

“Can we have our leader back, please?” Eliot asked, as Hawkeye looked up and nodded at his partner. Exhaling softly, the Black Widow turned towards Nate – only to be met by Parker pressing the agent’s cuffs into her hands as she helped Nate to his feet.

“Is that enough?” Eliot asked as neither of the SHIELD agents made any move to stop thief or mastermind.

Confused, Natasha Romanoff stared at him. “What do you mean?”

Now, Eliot let his smile show. “I wasn’t talking to you.”  
**************************  
“Interpol? Really?” Nate asked, as they made their escape.

Eliot’s question had, in fact, been for Sophie and the two squads of embassy security lying in wait just outside the courtyard. At her signal they had moved in and surrounded the two SHIELD agents.

“I stole one of Sterling’s badges last time we saw him,” Parker confessed.

Hardison hugged her against his side. “She’s brilliant, she is! All I had to do was attach one of Sophie’s aliases to it.”

Nate looked over his shoulder at Parker. “I saw you plant two pieces on Agent Romanoff. What were they?”

“Extra insurance,” Sophie answered for the thief. “I figured if we could arrange for them to be caught with some expensive jewelry in addition to top secret paperwork, it could buy us more time to get away.”

It had at that, if Nate was any judge of the chaos blooming in their wake as they’d left. “And the plans?” he asked.

“Transmitted to the client,” Hardison confirmed. “The resistance cell should be re-organizing within the week. A job well done, if I do say so myself.”

Eliot snorted. “Yeah, assuming we didn’t just kick off an international incident. Or was I the only one who noticed that they knew who we were?”

He wasn’t, but as his head began throbbing again, Nate was willing to file that under a problem for another day.


End file.
